Funny Matters which Cause Us to Stop and Think

It is always helpful and advantageous to add a dash of humor to our classes (personally, I like to use examples which “shock” my students because this will make sure that they really remember what I have taught them since we usually remember surprising events, examples and ideas better than more everyday, “normal” facts).

The other day I got my hands on a collection of complaints that the travel agent Thomas Cook had received from its clients and I have to admit that after reading some of them I got the idea to write  this post about interculturality (another one) and about how important it is for Spanish as a foreign language teachers to not only introduce their students to grammar, lexis and syntax but to also act as cultural “ambassadors”, teaching our students, who come from so many different cultures, to see the traditions of other countries and  to understand the world in ways which might not always match up with their current mind sets.

I could not stop myself from smiling when I read the following complaint: “We booked a trip to a water park but nobody told us that we needed to bring swimming costumes and towels.”  This gem reminds me of an incident, the type which my father-in-law always says “could be true but which has never actually happened” where an American woman won a lawsuit against a microwave manufacturer for an exorbitant amount of money because she argued that the product instruction manual had not specified that you could not use the device to dry live animals after they had been in the bath.

Reading another complaint where somebody had claimed that “the beach was too sandy”, I am not going to pass comment, also caused me to stop and think about the way that people often do not make the effort to gain a better understanding of nor to adapt to their natural surroundings. One day we will probably find resorts with beaches made of rubber and foam.

However, among the complaints I found one which, at first glance, brought a smile to my face because of its apparent innocence but which, after I read it through for a second time, made me think about a situation that Spanish teachers and, of course by extension, everybody else can find themselves in: that is, we think that something is so obvious that it is not worth mentioning. This explains the origins of a great deal of issues which lead to intercultural conflicts, although in conversations, people normally manage to resolve or at least smooth over them by applying common sense and by engaging in feedback processes.

Let´s look at this in more detail. Usually, verbs are left out of press releases and adverts because the spokesperson or broadcaster thinks and takes for granted that the meaning IS CLEAR when this is not always the case.

I read the following complaint in Spanish:

"El folleto decía: No hay peluquería en el alojamiento. Nosotras somos peluqueras en prácticas,
¿haríamos bien quedándonos allí?"

I couldn´t help but smile however a cloud of doubt hung over me. I looked for the original complaint in English and I discovered that the text said the following:

“The brochure stated: ‘No hairdressers at the accommodation.’ We´re trainee hairdressers, will we be ok staying there?” The main idea of the complaint is expressed in the verbless sentence: No hairdressers at the accommodation. It occurred to me that in the face of this verbal omission, the reader can interpret this sentence in at least two different ways:

1.            There are no hairdressers at the accommodation.
2.            No hairdressers allowed at the accommodation.

It is like saying “No peluqueros/as en el alojamiento” in Spanish. Does this mean that the hotel does not offer a hairdressing service? Or does it mean that it does not accept hairdressers as guests in line with its business policy?

Faced with this fact I realized that the complaint where the women asked whether it would be ok for them to stay in a particular hotel was not unwarranted. Sometimes we do not pay attention to things which are under our noses precisely because they are right there and we think that they are too obvious to mention.

We need to be critical, above all self-critical, ensuring that we do not make prejudgments about other cultures because this can result in misunderstandings which could have been avoided if we had simply taken more care, becoming more receptive, flexible, tolerant and open to permanent changes.

The reason we need to do this is because one of the wonderful things about being a Spanish teacher is that we get an opportunity, which we frequently do not appreciate as much as we should, to enrich our lives by learning all about our students’ cultural backgrounds and lifestyles. We can also set up a kind of cultural exchange activity in our lessons where we reveal things about our own culture to our students using our materials, our exercises, our feedback or simply our classroom approach to do this.